During the exchange of information, against the tax amnesty

Banking secrecy no longer protects foreign clients: Council of States approved the transition to the automatic exchange of information. At the same time, he rejected the idea of a tax amnesty.

Rejection of the tax amnesty was the main surprise of the discussion of the Government’s project to move to automatic exchange of information for tax purposes (for more information about the content you’ll find in the article “Our Gazety.ch”).

During the September debate on the bill in the National Council the idea was born to provide unscrupulous taxpayers two years of voluntary declaration and payment of taxes over the last five years. However, the Council of States last week rejected the proposal by 37 votes to 7.

Some MPs are convinced that such a concession is unfair to honest taxpayers. Other members of the Council of States, considers that a tax amnesty is essential, first of all, from a financial point of view of the economic downturn, failed to persuade his colleagues.

On the other hand, the president of the Socialist Party, Christian Levra noted that the proposal of the tax amnesty is simply not relevant to the project for an automatic exchange of information with other countries, since the document does not provide for the abolition of bank secrecy in the country. However, the term “exchange” means that the information on the Swiss accounts opened in foreign banks, will be available to the authorities of the Confederation.

Nevertheless, the current Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf agreed that the question of the tax amnesty will be possible to return to the discussion of the abolition of banking secrecy in Switzerland. The probability of this, however, it is not too big: we recall that shortly after Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf has announced the upcoming retirement from the Federal Council, the government has postponed for an indefinite period changes in the criminal law in the tax sphere, aimed at easing bank secrecy for Swiss.

Strongly opposed a tax amnesty, the Council of States has not made other significant changes in the version approved by the National Council. However, the deputies supported a cheaper and simpler version of the data proposed by the heads of the cantonal Department of Finance. The idea is to use a number of pension insurance AVS / AHV identification of the taxpayer (the government and the National Council proposes to introduce a special number).

Both houses of the Swiss parliament decided not to impose sanctions against customers, “mistakenly” submitted false information, and bankers are not too hard Check the data.

In addition to discussing the project for an automatic information exchange, last week, the Council of States, followed by the National, “bury” the government’s proposals to tighten banking supervision for money laundering (more on this project, we wrote earlier). The introduction of additional requirements that would ensure that Swiss banks will accept the deposit of only the declared funds supported a minority of the Council of States. The majority considered that Switzerland is already doing enough in order not to be considered as accomplice of hiding funds from taxes.

It should be noted that the transition to the automatic exchange of bank data will increase the transparency of the financial center of the Confederation with respect to those countries that will join the new rules. As for citizens of other countries, the government proposes to oblige financial intermediaries to verify these customers based on the principle of self-regulation. However, the parliament did not tighten the requirements, not wanting to turn the bankers “gendarmes.”

We add that the dossier concerning the automatic exchange of information, the discussion returned to the National Council. Switzerland’s accession to the procedure planned for 2018, while most of its European neighbors are going to start sharing already in 2017.